Step Back, Doors Opening: An Ode to the D.C. Metro
by Stella Ho ’22
Stay on a Washington, D.C. metro car for 24 hours, and you’ll see the stages of life unfurl on the leather seats around you. A four-year-old girl in a blue dress kneels facing backwards on the seat, jabbering away to her father about the red, white, and blue popsicle she wants to get at the Smithsonian. A young woman clutching her work purse and an umbrella catches the eye of a young man with headphones standing several rows ahead of her, and they share a shy smile. A gray-haired man flips through the Washington Post that’s been tucked into his briefcase, barely looking up as passengers jostle past him in his aisle seat. They all come on; they all get off.
Seventeen years ago, I was that young girl who considered ice cream the main attraction in this nation’s capital. Every summer since then, I have waited at least once under the dim lights of the Glenmont, MD station platform for my ride on the Red Line to Metro Center, where I switch onto the Blue or Orange Lines to head to the Smithsonian museums and other D.C. monuments. Every summer until this one, when COVID-19 threw the third-largest rail transit system in the U.S. into disarray.
Subway. Photo courtesy by Laura James from Pexels
To be fair, the Metro has been in disarray as long as I’ve known it––and any person in the DMV (D.C.-Maryland-Virginia) region would concur. The system is currently undergoing renovation, and the motto plastered all over the cars, stations, and tunnels is “BACK2GOOD”. If self-awareness is the first step towards growth, then at least the Metro has admitted that it’s currently not in good shape. Part of the experience of riding the Metro is complaining about it. You can spend 11 minutes waiting with a friend for the next train by exchanging stories about the smells, sights, sudden stops and starts, and slight states of panic the Metro has so kindly brought your way. Take, for example, the multiple times smoke on the tracks has held my train at a standstill for five to ten minutes. Yet the Metro is inescapable if you want to travel in D.C., as evidenced by the 650,000 people who ride it every week. For those who don’t have a car or don’t want to drive through the blood pressure-raising traffic of D.C., this subway system is the main way into, out of, and through the city.
As a four-year-old standing on the Metro platform for the first time, though, my main concern was gripping tightly onto my mom’s hand, lest I lose her somewhere in the station tunnels where I was pretty sure dragons—the scary kind—lived. A groan and a rumble sounded as the steel monster screeched into view, its breath blowing my hair into my face. My grip tightened, and I made sure to mind the (four-year-old-foot-sized) gap. For several years, I was shepherded in and out of rides to the Smithsonian museums by my parents, and my fear morphed into a fixation on kidnapping. Perhaps some of those fears were justified, but most were the result of a paranoia stemming from not being allowed to venture out alone even into my suburban Maryland backyard. So, once a month each summer, I clung tightly to my mom through the National Gallery, around the Tidal Basin, and in line for the ice cream truck.
The first Metro train I rode on wasn’t too different from the very first Metro train, which ran on March 27, 1976. Although shiny new 7000-series trains––a voiceover proudly announces the name at every stop––are incrementally replacing the cars I grew up riding, many of those time capsules are still in use. They scream 1970s: brown color scheme, orange carpet, and sienna, burgundy, and light blue leather seats in rows of two. What once may have been considered an ultra-modern ride now feels dated compared to the glass-and-chrome systems of Hong Kong and Beijing, a difference my parents particularly enjoy pointing out. I feel a strange affection for those cracked leather seats, though. I’ve seen nothing like them in any other subway system in the world, and whenever I come home for the holidays, I don’t feel like I’ve actually returned until I breathe in that smell of Metro leather at least once.
Washington D.C., Photo courtesy by Samad Ismayilov from Pexels
The summer before my senior year of high school, after a bit more experience on the Metro through art field trips, excursions with friends, and one memorable ride with my cousin where I fell in love with the tall blonde man in sunglasses standing to my right in the car, it was time to step into a compartment alone. I had an interview at the Smithsonian for an internship at the Freer | Sackler Galleries, but it wasn’t the only thing fraying my nerves. With warnings from my dad about staying away from the edge of the platform fresh in my mind, I gripped my purse tightly to ward off pickpockets and double-checked the line changes in my head.
As I rose aboveground on the Smithsonian station elevator and took in the familiar sight of the National Mall, I breathed a sigh of relief. When I had visited D.C. with my mom in the past, we always stopped first at the Freer | Sackler Galleries because they had the cleanest bathrooms in the entire city before moving on to see exhibits at other museums. (And for that reason, I had called it the “pee-pee museum” for years.) I decided against mentioning that fact during the interview.
I’ll always be grateful that my interviewers saw something in me, in part because that internship gave me the opportunity to travel to and from D.C. every week of senior year by myself. Initially, there were a fair share of blunders. On the way to my first meeting, I switched at Metro Center to the correct line, but in the wrong direction. After about three stops, I realized that the names didn’t sound familiar, and quickly got off to head backwards. That happened at least two more times.
Subway, Photo courtesy by Leon Warnking from Pexels
Once I finally memorized the right direction, I could look at the riders around me. The ride into D.C. was always a mixed bag, since only tourists, other students, or retirees had the leisure to travel at 2:40 PM. With an empty seat next to me, I did my statistics homework or makeup, the latter often while mothers side-eyed my audacity at blending concealer in public. One afternoon, two little boys wearing basketball jerseys and holding a laminated plastic sign and a bag approached me. “Fundraising for Sports Uniforms,” I read. I handed over a $5 bill, not knowing for sure whether it would actually go towards sports uniforms, but willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’d seen kids holding similar signs plenty of times before, but now earning a stipend this was the first time I felt I could help.
The ride back home at 6 PM, on the other hand, brought out the professionals. At rush hour, you get acquainted with a certain cast of characters. My favorites were the women whose outfits, consisting of a blazer, pencil skirt, and button-down blouse, decidedly clashed with the Nike sneakers on their feet. Sometimes, you could see a high heel making a small pointed indent in their purses. One of my dreams had been to clack authoritatively through D.C. in high heels, but I suppose when you wear heels for eight hours, the comfort of sneakers is a relief. As the women looked at their phones, I tried to imagine what shoes they had chosen to match their outfits. I also liked the balance experts, middle-aged men in trench coats and gray suits who stood with legs apart by the door reading a newspaper with two hands, never wavering in their stance even when the train jerked to a stop.
Rush hour usually meant standing room only. When I stood and gripped the metal pole for balance, I didn’t trust myself to use my phone with one hand, so I started watching faces for entertainment. The only common denominator was exhaustion. Despite the shoulder-to-shoulder occupancy, the only sound was the thumping of the car on the tracks. The sound of a person chatting on their cell phone was magnified tenfold. The eyes that I could see––those that weren’t turned down towards phones––stared vacantly at the indeterminable black landscape outside the window, broken only every eight minutes or so by fluorescent station lights. As people got off at their stops and the seats slowly cleared, I would drop into an empty row, now spent myself.
One winter afternoon when it was still bright outside after my internship meeting, I decided to walk to Metro Center from the Smithsonian and save $0.40 on Metro fare. I opened up Google Maps as a backup measure. When I got to the area, I found the part of D.C. that actually resembles a city. The architecture was still stately, but there were young professionals at happy hour on hotel terraces, people rushing down streets with purpose, and me, gawking a bit at the realization that there was more to this city than marble monuments.
Before that afternoon, my dream had been to live among New York City’s bright lights and incessant motion. I loved visiting Hong Kong with my mom and letting myself get swept up in her home city’s relentless pace. But as far as I was concerned, D.C. was too open, too languid, too flat. It was where I went to see art and historical artifacts, in museums whose layouts I had memorized by junior year.
I rambled down 12th Street, clutching the strap of my mom’s old leather tote on my shoulders, peeking into the cross streets at each corner. When I was within eyesight of the Metro Center station, I calculated how late the walking had made me. My dad was probably getting worried, since I usually called him when I was about to get on the train. Then I saw an Uniqlo, a store which I had only seen before in Beijing, Hong Kong, and NYC. In a flash, I was smiling at the sales associate as I went to look at the blouses, wondering if she could tell I was an intern posing as a full-time employee. A few minutes after stepping back outside, my phone rang. Yes, I know it’s getting dark, but it has just been so beautiful outside that I wanted to take a walk. Yes, I’ll call you when I’m near Glenmont. Thank you, dad. A feeling of guilt fluttered, but it struggled against the lightness of being untethered that was quickly spreading through my chest.
Silhouette of Tower, Photo courtesy from Pexels
I never went straight home again after that day, though I did take care to call if I was going to be late. Sometimes, too, I left early for those meetings and would find a new stop to get off at to walk to the museum, just so I could see more of the city I barely knew. On a Thursday at the end of January 2018, I rode the Metro from school and got off at the Smithsonian as usual. When I stepped onto the platform, I ran into another intern heading in the opposite direction––we’d both forgotten that week’s meeting had been cancelled. It was bright outside, the beginning of a long weekend, and since I was already in D.C., I decided to stay and see where the afternoon would take me. At Sephora on F St., I claimed my free birthday gift. While visiting the Capitol Building––for the first time––I accidentally entered an off-limits area with some exclusive tour group before being escorted out by a security guard. My heeled ankle boots were starting to pinch as I walked to Union Station beneath a golden-streaked coral sky. My phone rang. My mom sounded amazed when I told her I had spent the afternoon alone in D.C. After I jabbered to her about how grand the Capitol dome was, I thought I heard a smile in her voice when she told me to just call when I was near home again. I stepped through the unfamiliar doors of Union Station and saw an old friend: the arrow towards the Red Line trains.
Now that I know most people on the Metro are tired political aides and not potential kidnappers, and that there’s more to the U.S. capitol than tourist destinations, Washington, D.C. is one of my favorite cities. Its beauty lies in how much life is hidden beneath that stately façade. These days on the Metro, I still grip my purse, but I’m no longer gripped by fear. When the doors slide closed and the train starts moving, I settle into that leather seat, sure that I can brave whatever awaits me at the next stop.
Stella Ho ’22 (sho2) loves the Boston T’s Green Line because, even though it moves at the pace of a jogger, riding on it makes her feel like she’s traveling back in time to 1897, when the first subway system in the U.S. opened.